The Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ZCBC) has resolved that there will be no more music courses for new compositions in 2014 as had been previously communicated.

This was confirmed in an interview with the ZCBC secretary General, Fr. Chiromba in an interview.

“The Bishops Conference has resolved that there be only one music course for new compositions per year. You find that over the past five years there have been many songs composed, taking for example, in one year people would go for a music course in April and there are twenty new songs.

“Before the end of that same year another course is held with a similar number of songs being released even before people have mastered those from the previous course and because of this, people have complained that how can we cope with this situation”, he said.

The General Secretary added that new compositions are making other people strangers in the Church. “Many people have complained that they are now strangers at Mass. The Catholic liturgy is all about participation and involvement and when only new songs are dominating the whole Mass, the whole idea is missed”, he added.

Fr Chiromba could not hide that other sections within the Church are arguing that the gift of composing sacred hymns is from God therefore composers should be given a free will to compose as long as they can.

He argues that contemporary compositions are different from the Chishawasha hymns that were known to everyone regardless of age and location and expressed that it will be of great importance to embark on revision courses so as to make known to all ages, old and new songs which will improve participation of everyone in the liturgy.

The bishops stated that only 15 songs will be produced per year from only one Diocese but revision courses can be held time and again.